How a gun-control group got the owner of Lock N Load to quit the business

By Cleve Wootson
Washington Post
August 9th. 2017

The first time Benjamin Bishop walked into Lock N Load and tried to buy a gun, employees at the Florida gun store turned him away — and rightly so.

So the second time he went to Lock N Load in Oldsmar, Fla., he brought a neighborhood acquaintance.As Bishop stood nearby, the 18-year-old acquaintance bought a 12-gauge shotgun for $279 in cash, court documents say.

Outside the store, the neighbor turned the 12-gauge over to Bishop, who said he wanted to use it to protect himself from gang members.

But Bishop used the weapon on his mother instead: In 2012, he shot Imari Shibata and her boyfriend as they slept in their home in Pinellas County. She’d told him that he needed to get a job and that he had to take his schizophrenia medication. Bishop was furious.

A lawsuit filed in 2014 in a Florida circuit court by the families and the Brady Center claimed that the store’s owner, Gerald Tanso, didn’t do enough to keep a dangerous weapon out of the hands of a mentally ill man with a criminal record.

The parties settled. Most of the details of the settlement are confidential, but one part was made public: Tanso agreed to sell his gun store and never sell a firearm again.

Jonathan Lowy, a Brady Center attorney involved in the case, said the organization has been going after the small percentage of gun stores that, he said, are responsible for 90 percent of the guns used in crimes.

Marion Hammer, a former president of the NRA who is now a lobbyist for the organization, said it doesn’t comment specifically on lawsuits it is not involved in, but she criticized the Brady Center’s tactics in general.

The Brady Center “is determined to find any way it can to destroy Second Amendment rights of citizens,” she said, adding: “There don’t appear to be individuals they target — it’s a cause. And if they get an individual gun shop owner in their sights, they’re going to spend whatever it takes unless the courts step in and put a stop to this malicious behavior.”

“It’s wrong to punish the seller of a legal product for doing what’s constitutionally protected,” he said in an interview. “The bad guy in this case is the murderer. You don’t go after Chrysler because a car that was sold by a dealer is used to run somebody over.”